The title says it all.
Unnamed sources are telling Bloomberg that Apple plans to overhaul iTunes by the end of the year, marking one of the largest changes to the platform since its original 2003 debut. This change will include a deeper integration of its iCloud file storage service so that users can better access and manage their music, videos and apps across different Apple gadgets.
The news arrives as rumors begin to boil regarding the supposed Apple iTV. One of the reported features Apple has been hammering out regarding the unannounced device is the ability to better share content across multiple iOS platforms. More specifically, Apple wants to provide customers with the ability to start a movie on one Apple device, and then continue later on with another iOS device.
As Google discovered over the past year after the launch of Android tablets, a strong multimedia platform is essential in selling tablet hardware. In the last quarter alone, Apple's iTunes has generated almost $1.9 billion USD -- it's the largest link between Hollywood, record companies, book publishers and the general consumer. A major overhaul will reportedly have implications for a media industry that has seemingly been shaped by Apple's virtual storefront.
According to sources, the overhaul is intended to improve how people manage all their files. This will include how customers will discover new media, and how they will access their stocked library across multiple iOS devices. Improving discovery will mean offering tools that will make sharing music easier. One source said Apple is actually negotiating with record labels so that users can listen to a song sent to them from a friend for free, similar to what Google offers.
As for the iCloud aspect, Apple plans to fix problems associated with the way users organize their storage so that it's not such a chore. Other changes coming to iTunes include creating separate applications for features like podcasts, additional multimedia for music like photos and videos, and an expansion into Asia.
Bloomberg reports that music labels have been urging Apple to offer a music-subscription service similar to Spotify, but Apple is unlikely to announce that type of service, sources said.
OMG, what an AMAZING feature, that we've had, with netflix, for years now... oh...
I can do that too. I just have the damn file on all my devices...
I hate content-integration. I know they just want to monetize their products, as any other company does, but I want a music library organization program. I don't want a "throw media in your face so you can buy it" program.
So, you like the idea of a program like iTunes, but hate the actual program iTunes... You're not alone there.
The PC version however runs very slow, corrups, crashes, has odd graphical glitches if you have a large music library and is bass ackwards to use. WMP may not be the best media player on earth, but I have never had an issue with it trying to reorganize my library (like itunes does), rename my music that I created (like itunes does), swap out album artwork when I found a better quality pic than they did, and when I click on an artist and press play, is stays on that artist without the need to make annother useless playlist!
And lets not even begin to talk about the fun my wife and I have had trying to get her damn ipod to sync properly with the songs she actually wants to hear. Or the weird permissions issues we have run across where her ipod thinks that the computer that just spent forever loading it with music, is somehow not the proper computer or user information, so it needed to be reformatted again to change 2 songs that she forgot to put on the thing. And God help you if you actually use WMP for day to day use, and use itunes just for the ipod syncing.
Seriously though, it's not all that terrible to use anymore, and they have addressed quite a few issues. But I would still like to see it become a little less intrusive, give a few more options to users, and take care of some of those dumb corruption issues that still crop up from time to time.
Yeah its such bloatware, Samsung has applications dedicated to importing data from iTunes... Basically Samsung phones uses iTunes.
iTunes is currently the number 1 application for music management.
I'm not a fan of iTunes as a media player or much at all in general but I did just successfully play a few HD movies (720p and 1080i H.264 mkv's) from within iTunes. I'm not sure if this is supported out-of-the-box or if it's a result of the many codec's I have installed but right-clicking them and opening in iTunes did give me HD playback.
I agree with an earlier poster about the multi-threading support. Also, the 64-bit iTunes has no performance difference over the x86. I often need to convert videos to send to my iPhone and the encoding speed is dreadfully slow if you use iTunes to do it. Using Handbrake or other 3rd party encoders like AVS can encode to h.264 .mp4 files in about 1/3rd the time and result in much better quality once the video ends up on my phone.
This is pretty much how I feel about iTunes as well. I've tried Winamp a number of times and while I love how responsive it is in comparison to iTunes (and its much smaller footprint), with thousands of songs in my library it just lacks the features that I need to make organizing my music as easy as possible.
Luckily since I've upgraded to SSD it's somewhat softened the blow that iTunes does to system resources. I also hope that this redesign does something to address its poor optimization on Windows, but I highly, highly doubt it.
You're talking about playing videos in iTunes but I'm talking about downloading via iTunes. I think Apple does not allow people to download the HD versions of their videos to PC.